The Easiest Thing
by Against Everything
Summary: Irvine One-Shot. When you pull the trigger, your enemy isn't all that dies. Rated for language and violence.


"**The Easiest Thing"**

**A Final Fantasy VIII One-Shot**

**By Against Everything**

* * *

"_On this battlefield, no one wins."_

--Iron Maiden, "The Trooper"

* * *

To others, he may still be a cadet. But to himself, there is no doubt that he is a SeeD.

Or at least, he will be once he does..._this_.

It isn't a particularly hard thing to do, really. Just a soft squeeze, and—_BANG!_—it's done. Not hard at all. The easiest thing in the world, in fact.

He stares down the scope, feeling the war-drum beat of his blood against the cold metal barrel. His finger moves slowly around the trigger guard. Despite the chilly breeze that blows across the clock tower, sweat pours down his face and into his eyes, pasting his long brown hair to his forehead. He blinks.

A five degree adjustment, and suddenly _she _is there. Two black lines meet over her thin, frail neck. He gives a start as the memories roar through his mind.

A field full of flowers. A brown-haired girl dressed in yellow, laughing and spinning. Two blonde boys, one crying and the other smirking. A blonde girl, giving him a scolding that would make his drill sergeant proud, after he breaks one of her sacred rules. A dark-haired boy with blue-gray eyes that fill with tears even as he says, "I'll be alright without you, Sis."

Above all else, _her_ smiling face. She seems angry at first—he had worried her somehow—but then he does something cute, something childish, something charming, and she melts.

_Matron._

He can hardly believe that the sorceress in his crosshairs that just murdered the Galbadian president and the beautiful woman that had been the only mother he'd ever known...are the same person.

No...that isn't right.

It's just that he's trying hard to _pretend_ they aren't the same.

The dark-haired boy—now much more than a boy—stands behind him, but he hardly notices. His mind elsewhere, he babbles something incoherent about freezing up, about being nervous in these situations, about being worried he'd screw up.

What a fucking joke.

He almost wishes he _will _botch the whole goddamn thing.

That way, he won't have to kill the sorceress.

_Matron._

No, that will just be a signal, they'll kill her anyway.

_But isn't that better than killing her yourself?_

Of course it isn't, you fucking fool, it's always easier to kill from a distance. That's why you chose to be a sniper, isn't it? So that you'll never have to smell the blood of your enemy?

So you'll never have to watch as your blade slices through their stomach and sends their intestines pouring out or your whip curls around their necks and turns their faces blue or your pinwheel spins through the air and their mouths and _tongues—_

_SHUT THE FUCK UP!_

His finger tightens on the trigger.

She _has _changed, he reflects. Those veins on her cheeks, those claws on her hands, the way she tossed Vinzer Deling's body aside like it was a fucking _ragdoll_...yes, she's changed. She's not the same woman she once was. She isn't your matron.

Then, her head turns, and she looks squarely up the barrel of his gun. What he sees in her eyes decides everything for him.

_Sorceress Edea._

For they are not her eyes. They have turned black as coal, cruel and beady. Her face is but a dark shadow of his Matron's radiant visage. Her pale skin looks like the skin of a corpse.

And maybe that's what she is.

Maybe she's already dead.

He supposes that it makes sense. Isn't someone who has lost everything that they once were—someone whose soul has been so throughly beaten down that it appears nonexistent—someone whose once boundless kindness has metamorphosed into a viciousness just as unlimited—someone willing to harm the ones she once loved—isn't someone like that basically dead?

He takes comfort in this thought, the thought that he is simply the rubber-stamping bureaucrat authorizing her execution, the thought that her fate was decided long ago by powers far beyond his or her control. He takes comfort in it, even though in his heart he can't help but feel that it doesn't even come close to the truth, and even if it did, it could never justify his actions.

Because, in his mind, he has no choice.

He envisions what will happen. The bullet will travel along at a speed faster than even the fastest trains in Galbadia. It will slither through the bars trapping the sorceress like the deadly viper that it is. It will rush forward and slam into her head, popping it like a blood-filled water balloon and spraying gray matter across the float. It will pick her body up and hurl it, probably slamming it against the iron bars as the lifeless, bloody mass of ripped meat that was once her head lolls to one side.

It will be gruesome. But, it will be quick.

And six hundred thousand Gil will be transferred from General Caraway's account to Garden's.

It's the easiest thing in the world. Just a soft squeeze.

Irvine Kinneas pulls the trigger.

BANG!

It's done.

To others, he may still be a cadet. But to himself, there is no doubt that he is a SeeD.

To others, he may still be a child. But to himself, there is no doubt that he is an adult.

_Isn't someone willing to harm the ones she once loved...basically dead?_

_Isn't someone willing to harm the ones HE once loved...basically dead?_

He is a SeeD.

He is an adult.

_He is a murderer._

And to others, he may still be alive.

But to himself...

There is no doubt that he is dead.

_**End**_

**A/N: Well, this idea—along with a good deal of the wording for it—came to me while I was in the shower, and I just knew I had to write it. Odd, but interesting, right? I got out, dried off, picked up my computer, and started typing. An hour and a half later...here I am. I hope you enjoyed it, or better yet, were provoked to thought by it. If you're following "Blowin' in the Wind," know that my work on this story did not in ANY way take away from my work on that story; the next chapter's coming, just more slowly than I had thought. If you aren't following "Blowin' in the Wind," YOU SHOULD BE! Go! Read! Please?**

**With that shameless plug for my own story, and with a fervent request for reviews, I leave you. Peace,**

**--Against Everything**


End file.
